Boys & Girls Clubs to honor Volunteers of the Year

Sunday

NEWPORT — Betsy Rice was willing to sit down and talk about her recognition as one of the Boys & Girls Clubs of Newport County’s volunteers of the year, only she didn’t want to focus on her accolades.

Instead she exhorted fellow Newport County residents to volunteer. If she were to go door to door, she believed, people would be generous with their wallets, but not as inclined to do so with their time, which is what the roughly 5,500 children served annually by the nonprofit organization need, Rice contends.

Nothing is more important than “face-to-face” time, as the retired teacher put it.

“I care deeply about everything in the city,” she said Wednesday afternoon in the Central Clubhouse on Church Street. “We have our own Boys & Girls Club. Come on.”

Rice and fellow Volunteer of the Year, Ron Subourne, and other honorees will be recognized at the Growing Together! second annual awards gala on Saturday, March 24. The local branch held its inaugural gala last March to commemorate its 60th anniversary.

“This year’s honorees have demonstrated an exemplary commitment to advancing the club and supporting our local youth,” said Joseph Pratt, its executive director and CEO, in a prepared statement. “The club continues to provide critical services to local families, which would not be possible without the backing of our community leaders.”

Rice and Subourne are being recognized for “working directly with the club’s youth, for stressing the importance of a sound education and for spending countless hours assisting youth with their homework.”

A year after the Boys Club of Newport County was incorporated, it started renting the Church Street building, the historic Thayer School, in 1957. A separate Girls Club of Newport County was established in 1974, and the two merged in 1980, according to a history of the organization. There is a second clubhouse at the Florence Gray Center on York Street and a summer camp called Camp Grosvenor in North Kingstown.

The organization’s mission is “to inspire and enable all youth, especially those who need help most, to realize their full potential as productive, responsible and caring citizens.” Its three primary focuses are academic success, character and citizenship development and healthy lifestyles.

The local branch provides 25,000 meals and snacks to its members per year and offers summer camps, tutoring and a place to go after school. A swimming pool is a main draw at the Central Clubhouse.

The organization is a place where kids can be kids, recalled Pat Rooney, whose family is being recognized at the gala for its “outstanding service.”

“It was a place to go see other guys,” Rooney said of the now-defunct clubhouse on Green End Avenue. Growing up in a household with four sisters, the clubhouse was an escape, where he could play ping pong or shoot pool with other boys.

According to statistics provided by the organization, 42 percent of children in Newport live in single-family homes; 31 percent of Newport high school students experience chronic absenteeism; and 33 percent of Newport third-graders are reading at proficiency.

Volunteers who can shepherd the children in the right direction and invest in their lives are crucial to fulfilling its mission, according to Rice. She volunteers about three days a week and tutors Rogers High School students in English, an oft-hated subject. When disillusioned students argue they can drop out of high school and hold down a steady job, she gives them a reality check.

“You get an education, you might get a driver’s license, a job to pay for rent,” she said, “all the things you need to be an adult.”

Rice stresses the need for students to complete their homework. “We have to have it,” she said. “It re-enforces what was learned in the classroom that day. ... If I’m there on a Monday, I want to know what’s due Friday.”

She worked as a teacher throughout the country, and retired in 2009 after about 21 years in the North Kingstown school district.

Her husband, Peter, worked as an aviator for the Navy, meaning her family bounced around the country and abroad. The couple and their two children, Alec and Kate, settled in their Harrison Lane home in 1986, when Peter took a post as an aviator instructor at the Naval War College.

The couple has never left and has no intention of doing so.

The City-by-the-Sea was a good fit for their different preferences. “He likes small and I like cosmopolitan,” Rice said. “So this has both.” She relishes grabbing a cup of coffee at a cafe and hearing multiple languages being spoken by patrons.

Their children went through Newport public schools and consider the city to be their hometown.

With that mind, Rice turned her attention closer to home after retiring.

“I want to do something for Newport,” she thought to herself. Volunteering with the Boys & Girls Clubs has been her way of giving back ever since.

The organization and its clubhouses can be different things to different people, Rice stressed. The need for a place like it still exists, and it is up to residents to answer the bell and volunteer. The success of the community hinges on it, Rice insists.

The gala will be held from 7-11 p.m. at the Newport Marriott at 25 America’s Cup Ave. Tickets cost $50 each. For a full list of the honorees and information about the event, visit bgcnewport.org/annualawards.

Gomes@NewportRI.com

Never miss a story

Choose the plan that's right for you.
Digital access or digital and print delivery.